Wednesday, 29 October 2008

All Your Children Are Belong To Us...

More utter balls from Ed:

Pupils should be kept in school grounds during lunch breaks to stop them eating unhealthy take-away food, the Schools Secretary Ed Balls has said.

Yeah, I know, it's a worry, isn't it Ed? Not, obviously, as big a worry as them being unable to read and write, but then, that failure comes back on schools policy, and we (that is, you) can't have that!

This is called a 'distraction technique':

This will not be a compulsory requirement, but Mr Balls says he will back heads trying to impose a policy of not allowing pupils out during the day.

Well, of course! He knows full well that it doesn't need to be compulsory - there are plenty of little Headmaster Hitlers salivating for a chance to throw theiir weight around, secure in the knowledge that the governors will do little to stop them, because 'it's for the chilllddreeeennnn!'

He also wants councils to limit the number of take-aways near schools.

And again, keen not to get his own governmental hands dirty. Also, the legions of Town Hall tyrants will be only too glad to do his bidding here. And if they aren't, no doubt he'll find a way to, errr, encourage them via funding...

Mr Balls will tell the conference that attention needs to be paid to what children are eating outside school.

"There is no point in banning junk food and raising the quality of lunches in schools, if teenagers can simply go to eat unhealthy food from neighbouring take-aways," says Mr Balls.

Curse you, teenagers, curse you for your free will!!

How long before this insane meddler starts casting a beady eye on what parents serve their children at dinner and the weekend too? Perhaps then, people will wake up to what someone like this really thinks of 'the public'?

But wait! It seems we can lay the blame for this epidemic of chip and kebab munching at the government's door after all. The BBC article goes on:

The research by the Nutrition Policy Unit of London Metropolitan University found that two in five pupils never used the school canteen.

An important factor in eating habits was the speed and convenience of getting food from local take-aways, rather than queuing and overcrowding in school canteens, found researchers.

Rather than the quality or cost of school food being the determining factors, it was often the lack of comfort in the school canteen that influenced pupils.

The study found that local shops were more entrepreneurial about meeting this demand - offering cut-price child-size portions and getting in extra staff so that children could be served quickly.

In other words, local shops are better at serving customer need than the dead hand of state, with its one-size-fits-all policies, and its paring-costs-to-the-bone philosophy. Who'd have thought it?